Thursday, March 8, 2012

Time Management

by Oleg Ignatenko

Our
life revolves around time. Each day we are given twenty-four hours to
accomplish small tasks and duties that will enable us to achieve our
life goals and in the process meet new people and discover more about ourselves. Twenty-four hours may seem like a lot but for people who have a hard time managing their schedule,
it may seem like they never have enough time for anything. It is
especially difficult for college students who sometimes have to juggle many things at once, such as school
projects, activities, different organizations, work, and in some cases
kids and families. We all wish we had more time during the day to
accomplish what we set out to do. But how? Hopefully this blog will answer this question and help you determine a way to prioritize your schedule.

HOW BAD TIME MANAGEMENT COULD AFFECT YOUR DAY

Here are 3 of the biggest mistakes that can occur when trying to accomplish daily tasks

Targeting too many areas at once

When trying to develop a schedule, the first thing you want to do is determine a specific task that you will want to finish by the end of that day. This
should be your primary objective for the day and the task that should
come before every other one. Try to focus on this task
and feel free to take time away from your other interests in order to
accomplish it. That way, as long as you achieve this particular goal,
you will not feel like your day went to waste. By keeping yourself on
track and finishing the important aspects of your daily schedule, you
will be able to accomplish so much more with your time as well as
maintain a sense of purpose and fulfillment.

Being busy just to be busy

This
is usually referred to as busy work. Busy work is something that keeps
you occupied without being constructive or productive. A good example
of busy work is assignments you had to complete that were given to you
in high school or middle school when you had a substitute teacher whose
sole purpose was to make sure you were working on something/anything.
Other examples of busy work are completing a project with no clear
purpose, word searches which do not actually reinforce vocabulary and
anything that is there just for the purpose of keeping someone busy with
no prominent objective. This type of work can cause students or
employees much frustration because even though they remain busy for the
moment, later on they feel a complete sense of lack of accomplishment
as well as no purposeful progress.

Allowing yourself to get distracted

First
of, lets be honest with ourselves. We live in Miami where the sun is
always bright, the ocean is always inviting and there are an unlimited
amount of activities to do for fun. But instead of looking at those
things as distractions, lets view them as incentives or as rewards that
you can present yourself with after finishing the things that should
come first. There are of course other distractions, such as the ones
that are present during your study hours. Nowadays the majority of
students use a computer when working on their homework or conducting
research. That gives us the opportunity to consistently disrupt our
concentration by allowing ourselves to wander to other sites such as
Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube where you might start of watching a video
on math tutorials and two hours later you are somehow watching videos of
cats doing backflips. A great way to avoid this is to download a
program called FocalFilter. This program is designed to allow you
to block certain websites and the length of time that they will remain
blocked for, resulting in keeping you more focused at the task at hand
and allowing you to get more work done.

THE EISNEHOWER METHOD OF TIME MANAGEMENT

The
Eisenhower Method of Time Management was proposed by Dwight D.
Eisenhower. For those of you who do not know who he is, here is a quick
history lesson. He is not the guy from "The Office". Dwight David
Eisenhower was the thirty-fourth President of the United States who
priorly served in WWII as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in
Europe and held the responsibility for planning and supervising the
invasion of France and Germany. Now that I'm sure you guys are very
accepting of this man, lets get to his method. The Eisenhower Method of
Time Management is based on the prioritization matrix which consists of
areas of importance and areas of urgency.

There are 4 priority blocks and they are:

Urgent and Important

Important yet not Urgent

Urgent yet not Important

Not Important as well as Not Urgent

Whether
reacting to or creating our environment, Dwight D. Eisenhower's Method
of Time Management makes a lot of sense. If our work is dependent,
this method prioritizes our work tasks.

By
applying these simple time management methods to your life, it can help
you become more effective as a professional as well as bringing
yourself into greater awareness of time. Increasing your own
consciousness of a thing is the basis of improvement.

TIME MANAGEMENT TIPS FOR STUDENTS

Have an organized workplace

Create an appointment calendar and follow it as best as you can

Take short breaks during study and work periods

Learn to say "no" to other activities when important deadlines are coming up

Try to be punctual and prepared for your classes

Know who to ask for help incase you might need it

At last, Have a positive attitude!

Remember,
we live in a very complex world and should not take the time to gather
all the information when we frequently use our own intuition.
Ultimately, we need to give equal priority to our family and friends,
leisure or pleasure as we do toward work. An important thing to
remember is that even when spending the majority of time thinking
strategically and planning things out, we can still get overwhelmed with
our day to day lives. A great way to avoid some of the daily stress is
to take a step back, take a break and allow your mind to clear. Even
though it may seem like you are wasting time, in reality, you are giving
yourself a chance to think clearly and more distinctively about the important
aspects in your life.

For extra help feel free to visit or contact the Camner Academic Resource Center (ARC) which offers a multitude of resources for every constituent of the University of Miami community. Currently the ARC houses 7 primary services: Tutoring Services, Office of Disability Services, Learning Specialist, UMX, Academic Workshops, Faculty Support and Independent Learning Initiative.

The ARC is located at the Whitten University Center, Suite N-201; 2nd floor, by the elevator Phone (305) 284-2800 Email: tutoring.arc@miami.edu